Re: What, exactly, is Apple's iPod business model?

spinoza1111 wrote:
On Sep 6, 11:56 am, "arvim...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arvim...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
spinoza1111wrote:
On Sep 4, 11:37 pm, Jeffrey Goldberg <nob...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 9/4/07 12:20 AM,spinoza1111wrote:
On Sep 4, 12:50 pm, Jeffrey Goldberg <nob...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's working out much better than the alternative.
How would you know that?
I lived in Hungary for six years including during the tail end of socialism.
A thug takeover supported by the Soviet army wasn't "socialism".
It is too easy an escape to say that Soviet socialism really "wasn't
socialism." It was started by serious socialists and fell prey to a
weakness of socialism in all socialist countries: socialism empowers
bureaucracy without adequate checks and balances. Soviet socialism and
socialist evangelism went way off the tracks, but it started on the tracks.

Hayek's 1944 claim, that socialism always and of necessity engenders
bureaucracy was immediately belied by the creation of the National
Health in Britain, that showed that large portions of an economy can
be socialised without excess bureaucracy. Hayek also never foresaw the
ability of computers to manage an economy or a segment of an economy:
it is a well-kept secret, for example, that the market-exogenous push
for computerization in the 1960s in the USA came from Lyndon Johnson's
"Great Society" plans.



I am not arguing in favor of every point Hayek ever made, just that untrammeled bureaucracy, even in Scandinavia, is insupportable in the long run. In Britain the check of non-Socialist government set in after less than a decade of Socialist party government, and alternating party government has been the rule there, not the exception. It is now the rule in Scandinavia, no longer the exception. In the United States, the New Deal and the Great Society introduced socialist policies without dogmatics, and Social Security and Medicare are justly termed the "third rail" of American politics, i. e., they are untouchable and anyone daring to touch them, e. g., Barry Goldwater, will suffer a fatal shock (just as touching the third rail of subway tracks causes a fatal electrical shock, as it transmits electric power to trains above it).


Hayek generalized overmuch from the Soviet model. He argues that
actually existing socialism (1) generates an excessive need for
coordination and control, and, further, that (2) self-seeking behavior
continues under socialism and undercuts its goals. He argues (3) that
nothing is better than a market system for efficient allocation of
resources.

In response to (1), this is true in a rigid Stalinist system but false
for most other socialistic systems which use the market to allocate
while regulating its limits: this experimentation, known as "New
Economic Policy" (NEP) under Lenin, caused a rapid Soviet recovery in
the 1920s while preserving the gains of socialism (universal
employment, education, health care and housing in a Russia ruined by
the Czarist war), and it was used by Deng Xiao Peng in the 1980s to
advance China at the fastest rate of growth world wide (but, Deng also
removed the "iron rice bowl").

In response to (2), planners need only to calculate at the micro-
economic level the costs and benefits of corruption.

(3) is just false as soon as the base of the market superstructure is
subject to market pressures: if people can't, for example, get potable
water, they spend all their time in ensuring this access and cannot
participate in a market. If (as Mohamed Yunis, the founder of
microcredit banking, shows in his book on microcredit) poor women have
access to non-Islamic, usurious credit, they are never able to save a
dime; Yunis has a solution he thinks is free-market, but actually
depends on lender self-restraint and communitarian values in a
socialistic way.



I have no argument with this. It is good socialism, of the type I approve. And it is tempered by capitalist principles governing more substantial types of loans.


What Hayek saw to be efficient allocators of resources were developed
markets with a critical mass of infrastructure constructed by
"socialistic" government meddling, exclusive of colonial
infrastructure construction in the interest exclusively of
metropolitan business. Thus the ante-bellum US government subsidies of
canal and then railroad investment, canal and railroads being
constructed from and to locations (such as Chicago, and the Illinois
river leading to the Mississippi river and the world) that served the
people of the US, created the "free market" of the first Gilded era:
thus the investment in mainframe computers, subsidized by the military-
industrial complex, created the free market in micros, software and
the internet of the second Gilded era (Gilded that is for the rich)
that started in the 1980s.

Whereas "primitive" societies without any infrastructure, or societies
with a distorted (but essential) infrastructure created without regard
to the needs of its people (such as the Congo with railways between
diamond mines and navigable rivers even today) can never use the
market as Hayek's resource allocator.


I am not defending everything Hayek ever said.


Even admirably functioning Scandinavian socialism engendered so much
nannying, that right-wing parties regularly defeat socialists. I think

Oh? Then why is the "nanny" state still in power in Scandinavia? Sure,
rich fat cats create in the privatized media the appearance of
grassroots resistance to the nanny state, and males disaffected by the
enhanced position of women in "nanny" states are regularly suckered
into believing them. But somehow the National Health in Britain, and
high taxes and social welfare in Sweden, remain.



See above. Alternating parties keep each other in check. The point is, that socialists in Scandinavia nannied to their own disadvantage. Of course, the benefits of socialism are untouchable, but the disadvantages should be disciplined by a fickle public.


only mixed socialism and capitalism function in enough competition to
keep each party aware of its weaknesses and ready to bridle some misconduct.

So why is this never tried in the leading capitalist country, and why
does that same country export its ideology at gunpoint (Chile 1973)?



It is indeed tried in most prosperous capitalist countries that have underlying socialist programs like Social Security, Medicare, socialized medicine (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, etc.), labor union rights, etc.








...

Bureaucracy has always flourished in Russia for cultural reasons, and
today it is returning to bureaucracy (rule in fact by the KGB) without
any "socialistic" provisions at all. Don't blame socialism.


Russian historical practice and untrammeled socialism are both inseparably to blame.


education and health service. And it also empowers nepotism, so the

Capitalism doesn't? FYI, most of the fortunes of the 1980s were made
by men such as Donald Trump and Fred (Federal Express) Smith who had
rich Daddies and didn't have to work at a paying job: they could
"follow their dream". Gates' own father was a successful corporate
lawyer who decided to bankroll his son after the latter dropped out of
Harvard University. Countless other men developing better systems fell
by the wayside because they had to work at paying jobs.



I am not defending capitalism. Its weaknesses are off-topic, and attacking them is self-indulgence on your part.


families of bureaucrats are first in line for education and health
services. And "President-for-Life" is a title more the rule than the
exception in most socialist countries outside of Western Europe, to say
nothing of hereditary monarchy in North Korea and Cuba. I don't know of
any reigning and ruling "Presidents-for-Life" in developed capitalist
countries (constitutional but powerless monarchs don't count), although
capitalist governments do find amenable "Presidents-for-Life" in
exploiting undeveloped countries.

Badoopsa badopsa: so, el Jefe Maximo Presidente can't be blamed in
socialism.

Cuba doesn't have anything like an hereditary monarchy. Raul has taken
over because a free election would be fucked over by the CIA and the
rich emigres.



That is incredibly naive. Fidel and Raul are just as much products of the Latin American ruling family tradition as Russian bureaucracy has roots in Russian historical traditions, and both Cuban and Russian sovietisms reinforced historical tradition with socialist dogma.







But this helps illustrate my approach. I'm relying on experience to
tell me whether markets in general work better than socialism. With
socialized medicine, socialism works better in my experience (even
though I'm not sure why). In just about every other domain socialism
works worse (and I have pretty good ideas about why).
How would you know?
Does one have to have direct experience of something to have a well
reasoned opinion? As it happens, I do have some limited experience of
socialism.
Nicaraguan and Hungarian. The former under continual United States
pressure, in effect a war socialism (the United States was convicted
of a violation of international law in its 1986 mining of Nicaraguan
harbors, as you know). The latter a murderous takeover and mirror
image, in the execution of Imre Nagy after the popular and anti-Soviet
revolution of 1956, of Chile 1973: a country which the "great" powers,
including the US, allowed to be bullied so they could have the
identical free hand in their own spheres: to bully in such a way that
inspires, indirectly, the behavior in this thread.
The Hungarian revolutionaries of 1956, 1968 and even 1989 were NOT
demonstrating for the right to be a source of cheap labor and guest-
house operators. They were, for the most part, demonstrating for
democratic (and therefore Scandinavian/British style) Fabian socialism
in each of those years.
There has been a considerable waffling between right-wing and moderate
socialist government, including reformed Communists on both sides, in
most Eastern European countries.

Cuba is no more free of geography than Finland. Fidel Castro has praised
the virtues of Albania's Enver Hoxha, North Korea's Kim Il-sung, and
Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and the United States is under no moral or

So? The United States praised Saddam Husayn when it fit its goals to
do so.


I am not defending American policies, just pointing out Fidel's lack of a sense of realism, rooted in his divine right possession of a president-for-life title, which by divine right he passes along to his brother.


legal obligation to trade with any government that picks its friend by
their degree of enmity to the United States. If Finland has to conform
itself to Russian pressure, Cuba will eventually have to recognize that
it can only prosper by living peacefully with its demanding neighbor.

It would like to. The problem is that ever since the Mexican war, the
United States has made it plain under the Monroe Doctrine that it will
overthrow Latin American governments that don't follow its lead.



I have no argument against this. And Finland is under a Russian equivalent of Monroe Doctrine domination. Geography rules. Deal with it.



However good the Cuban education and health care system is now, its
economic system was tops in Latin America before Castro and now ranks

Now, that's just bull***. Cuba was a mobbed-up under Batista, and its
people suffered from malnutrition, lack of access to potable water,
disease, and lack of education at the levels of el Salvador. American
tourists were getting blow jobs from Cuban girls desparate to pay the
rent, and starving Cubans performed sex acts on stage for money. Its
peasants were dispossessed of their land whenever US funded
businessmen wanted that land.

with Haiti; evenly distributed poverty is no more of an accomplishment

Poverty is strictly speaking not having enough to sustain life, and
this doesn't exist in Cuba. It does exist in the USA.

than ill-distributed prosperity was for Batista.



Strictly speaking, you are right about poverty and wrong about how rich Cuba was before Castro. The only point of dispute is whether in Latin America Argentina or Cuba was richer per capita. I conceded in advance that wealth was ill-distributed under Batista, so why repeat my point ad nauseum? Do you concede that Cuba is considerably poorer per capita today than in 1958? I blame Castro's lack of realism about the United States. You seem to think that the United States would ignore a hostile regime in its immediate neighborhood and trade with it regardless. What bull***! You are just as unrealistic as Castro, with his hereditary monarchy and his alliances with despicable dictatorships just because they opposed the United States. His most eminent principle is self-indulgence.





Yours for on-topic discussion,






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